Why did LinkedIn acquire Lynda.com?

[Quora Feeds]

Abhinav Sharma

tl;dr LinkedIn is uniquely positioned to design training for the skills in demand, and wants to have more in-house control of that.

This actually makes a lot of sense given their latest strategy and public vision declaration.

1. They want LinkedIn to digitally list every job in the world
2. They want a connection from jobs to every skill required to have that job.
3. They want a connection from skills to all providers of those skills, including rising online providers and MOOCs like Lynda, Coursera, Udacity, edX, etc.

This is all pretty clear from "LinkedIn's vision for the next 10 years" at 18:50

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...
The video also mentions that students coming onto LinkedIn is one of their fastest growing segments.

LinkedIn currently features certificates from Coursera, Udacity, etc. on your profile


From what I've seen they're making an aggressive push to ramp these up, but there's only so much you can do if you negotiate with third parties.

1. You don't want to give away your unique competitive advantage in knowing where the demand for skills is.
2. You can't verify the quality of skills equally amongst different providers and have to surrender some control.

So they bought a provider in-house that already knows how to deliver high quality professional training material (I've taken a photography class on Lynda and the content is really good with high production standards).

Here's what I bet their dream is -- use their data to figure out where the skills demand is, advertise it with their courses, offer certification designed to meet the need of employers, show employers the top performers in the associated classes, charge a hefty fee for connecting them, rinse and repeat.

In theory, this is a really good long term bet.

See Questions On Quora

Continue reading...

 

[Quora Feeds]

George Anders

Actually, I'm surprised it took LinkedIn this long to buy a career-training company. The strategic fit is criminally good.

Who belongs to LinkedIn? Some 350 million strivers who want to move up in the world. They get some benefit from the site already by sharing profiles and waiting for new business allies or recruiters to call. But that's passive. Members are happier -- and LinkedIn makes more money -- if the site can sell them lots of career-sharpening tutorials that can be seamlessly added to anyone's LinkedIn profile.

Abhinav Sharma nailed it. LinkedIn leaves most of the economic payoff on the table if it's just a platform for unaffiliated training companies to pitch their wares. Creating an in-house brand that offers comprehensive training for as little as $25/month (or $350/year if you want the full version), is a heck of a way to get paid more -- and to deliver pretty decent value if it's executed properly. I explore these possibilities in more detail this Forbes piece, LinkedIn Is Set To Train The World, With Its $1.5 Billion Lynda Deal

See Questions On Quora

Continue reading...